Wow. That turned out better than expected.

People rip on fantasy sports, but in reality, it's a way to take interest in the rest of the league instead of just your team. Fantasy sports owners know the stars of every team, not just the ones who are marketed by the team or the NFL.

Hell, fantasy sports was the only reason I was glued to the Indy/Baltimore game tonight. It was actually a pretty good game, but no way I'm watching it if I'm just a Dolphin fan.

Anyway, Peyton's desire to win the game instead of padding his stats (and Baltimore playing pretty good defense for a half) saved my butt and won me a championship. Thanks, Peyton.

Argh.

Coasted into today, thinking that I pretty much had my fantasy football league in the bag, meaning a nice amount of $$$ in my pocket.

Think again.

Willis McGahee decides to hurt himself, pretty much taking 15 points out of my pocket. I had four possible choices at quarterback going into this game, and I take the worse possible one. The next worse choice (that doesn't sound right) would have given me another 10 points, let alone what the [i]good[/i] choices would have gotten me.

So I head into tonights game with an 11 point lead... and Peyton Manning still to play on the opposing side. I've got two things going for me. One of them is the fact that they play Baltimore, which has a good defense, so maybe Peyton doesn't throw for 5 TDs and 500 yards. The other is that I've eliminated one of Peyton's targets because I started Reggie Wayne. Anything that Manning throws to Wayne helps me more than it does him - as we speak right now, Peyton's got 2 points for throwing for a little under 50 yards, but Reggie has 3, just for catching one pass (1 point for the catch, two more for the 22 yards it went for).

Plus, there's always Matt Stover. Perhaps this game will be a defensive struggle decided by field goals. That'd be super.

From Antonio Gates, tight end of the San Diego Chargers and one of the biggest reasons the Chargers are a... gasp... Super Bowl contender:

"You know what helped? Playing Madden. I was always the Chargers. After I got here, I'd play the game and notice things about the defenses. I started recognizing formations in the (video) game, then I'd get to practice and see them there."

I want a job where playing video games makes me a better employee.

Anger.

Dimebag Darrell Killed

Vulgar Display of Power is probably one of my 10 favorite albums, if not in the top 5. Pantera was a band that I got into relatively late. I had gotten a tape of VDoP back when I wanted "workout music" for the gym, although that didn't really fly that well.

During the ECW heyday, one of the most over them songs in the company was "Walk". To watch almost the entire Bingo Hall chant "RE...SPECT...WALK...WHADDYA SAY?" along to the song (which was eventually redone by Kilgore for the ECW soundtrack - opinions vary) was awesome, and it drew me back to VDoP, and I fell in love with the entire album.

I never really went out and explored other works of Pantera, mainly because I liked VDoP so much. Apparently, the shooter made some sort of comment about Pantera's breakup before going on his shooting spree.

Odd that it should take place on the 24th anniversary of John Lennon's murder. This is by no means an attempt to liken Lennon with Darrell, but both were apparently killed by crazed fans who were upset about the breakup of their previous bands.

Yet Nelly still stands.